Featured Publications

In this paper, we propose a model of endogenous partial insurance and we investigate its implications for macroeconomic outcomes, such as wealth inequality, asset accumulation, interest rate, and consumption smoothing. To this end, we include participation costs to state-contingent asset markets into an otherwise standard Aiyagari (1994) model. We highlight the resulting nonmonotonic relationship between wealth and insurance-market participation when insurance is costly. Poor households remain uninsured, middle-class households participate in the insurance market, whereas rich households decide to self-insure by only purchasing risk-free assets. After theoretically characterizing the endogenous partial insurance equilibrium, we quantify its effect, emphasizing the roles of a participation channel and an interest rate channel.

This paper documents a significant association between the exposure of an individual or area to the UK government’s austerity-induced welfare reforms begun in 2010, and the following: the subsequent rise in support for the UK Independence Party, an important correlate of Leave support in the 2016 UK referendum on European Union membership; broader individual-level measures of political dissatisfaction; and direct measures of support for Leave. Leveraging data from all UK electoral contests since 2000, along with detailed, individual-level panel data, the findings suggest that the EU referendum could have resulted in a Remain victory had it not been for austerity

We show that psychological well-being in adulthood varies with circumstance in early life. Combining a time series of real producer prices of cocoa with a nationally representative household survey in Ghana, we find that a one standard deviation rise in the cocoa price in early life decreases the likelihood of severe mental distress in adulthood by 3 percentage points (half the mean prevalence) for cohorts born in cocoa-producing regions relative to those born in other regions. Impacts on related personality traits are consistent with this result. Maternal nutrition, reinforcing childhood investments, and adult circumstance are likely operative channels of impact.

We propose a technique for assessing robustness to demand effects of findings from experiments and surveys. The core idea is that by deliberately inducing demand in a structured way we can bound its influence. We present a model in which participants respond to their beliefs about the researcher's objectives. Bounds are obtained by manipulating those beliefs with "demand treatments." We apply the method to 11 classic tasks, and estimate bounds averaging 0.13 standard deviations, suggesting that typical demand effects are probably modest. We also show how to compute demand-robust treatment effects and how to structurally estimate the model.

This paper examines whether propaganda broadcast over radio helped to change inter-ethnic attitudes in post-genocide Rwanda. We exploit variation in exposure to the government’s radio propaganda due to the mountainous topography of Rwanda. Results of lab-in-the-field experiments show that individuals exposed to government propaganda have lower salience of ethnicity, increased inter-ethnic trust and show more willingness to interact face-to-face with members of another ethnic group. Our results suggest that the observed improvement in inter-ethnic behaviour is not cosmetic, and reflects a deeper change in inter-ethnic attitudes. The findings provide some of the first quantitative evidence that the salience of ethnic identity can be manipulated by governments

To what extent does crime follow the pattern of potential gains to illegal activity? This article presents evidence on how criminals respond to this key incentive by reporting crime–price elasticities estimated from a comprehensive crime dataset containing detailed information on stolen items for London between 2002 and 2012. Evidence of significant positive crime–price elasticities are shown, for a panel of 44 consumer goods and for commodity related goods (jewellery, fuel, and metal crimes). The reported evidence indicates that potential gains are a major empirical driver of criminal activity and a crucial part of the economic model of crime. The changing structure of goods prices helps to explain over 10–15% of the observed fall in property crime across all goods categories, and the majority of the sharp increases in the commodity related goods observed between 2002 and 2012.

We show that psychological well-being in adulthood varies with circumstance in early life. Combining a time series of real producer prices of cocoa with a nationally representative household survey in Ghana, we find that a one standard deviation rise in the cocoa price in early life decreases the likelihood of severe mental distress in adulthood by 3 percentage points (half the mean prevalence) for cohorts born in cocoa-producing regions relative to those born in other regions. Impacts on related personality traits are consistent with this result. Maternal nutrition, reinforcing childhood investments, and adult circumstance are likely operative channels of impact.

This article studies the impact of distortions in the access to international capital markets on competition and productivity. I show that a reduction in these distortions leads to an increase in aggregate productivity through two different channels. First, firms that were previously credit constrained respond to better financing terms by increasing their investment in technology, a reallocation effect. Secondly, non-constrained firms also expand their investment in technology because of increased competition, a pro-competitive effect. I provide evidence for these two channels using firm-level census data from the deregulation of international financial flows in Hungary.

Akerlof, Robert and Richard Holden,, The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2016)

Most projects, in most walks of life, require the participation of multiple parties.While it is difficult to unite individuals in a common endeavor, some people, whomwe call “movers and shakers,” seem able to do it. The paper specifically examinesmoving and shaking of an investment project, whose return depends both on itsquality and the total capital invested in it. We analyze a model with two types ofagents: managers and investors. Managers and investors initially form social connections.Managers then bid to buy control of the project and the winning bidderputs effort into making investors aware of it. Finally, a subset of aware investors aregiven the chance to invest and they decide whether to do so after receiving privatesignals of the project’s quality. We first show that connections are valuable sincethey make it easier for a manager to “move and shake” the project (i.e., obtain capitalfrom investors). When we endogenize the network, we find that, while managersare identical ex ante, a single manager emerges as most connected; he consequentlyearns a rent. In extensions, we move away from the assumption of ex ante identicalmanagers to highlight forces that lead one manager or another to become a moverand shaker. Our theory sheds light on a range of topics including: entrepreneurship,venture capital, and anchor investments.

We endogenize entry to a security-bid auction, where participationis costly, and bidders must decide given their private valuationswhether to participate. We first consider any minimum reservesecurity-bid of a fixed expected value that weakly exceeds the asset’svalue when retained by the seller. Demarzo, Kremer and Skrzypacz(2005) establish that with a fixed number of bidders, auctionswith steeper securities yield the seller more revenues. Counterintuitively,we find that auctions with steeper securities also attractmore entry, further enhancing the revenues from such auctions.We then establish that with optimal reserve securities, auctionswith steeper securities always yield higher expected revenues.

We examine the impact of Chinese import competition on broad measures of technical change - patenting, IT and TFP – using new panel data across twelve European countries from 1996-2007. In particular, we establish that the absolute volume of innovation increases within the firms most affected by Chinese imports in their output markets. We correct for endogeneity using the removal of product-specific quotas following China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. Chinese import competition led to increased technical change within firms and reallocated employment between firms towards more technologically advanced firms. These within and between effects were about equal in magnitude, and account for 15% of European technology upgrading over 2000-2007 (and even more when we allow for offshoring to China). Rising Chinese import competition also led to falls in employment and the share of unskilled workers. In contrast to low-wage nations like China, developed countries imports had no significant effect on innovation.